According to a report in Bloggers Blog - Recession 2008 has hit Search Engines with a post on Yahoo cutting 1500-2000 jobs within the next two weeks. My experience - any time you hear a rumor of job cuts, 99% of the time, there's good deal of truth in it.
And it's not hard to see why Yahoo is cutting jobs - I already wrote about Search Engines start layoffs - small now - are signs of much more, ahead a few days ago. A reader of my blog quickly commented that
"….It's probably a little soon to suggest a trend of layoffs because 30 yahoo emps lost their jobs."
I wonder that person is going to say now?
Here's more from the Bloggers Blog post on Yahoo cutting 1500-2000 jobs within the next two weeks:
"…. A tipster believes Yahoo has created a list of 1,500-2,500 jobs that may be eliminated in the next two weeks. CEO Jerry Yang will reportedly make the decision to go forward with these layoffs–or not–next week. Jerry reportedly wants to announce the cuts with or before earnings (January 29th), but may not make them if the stock price recovers."
Well, if the Yahoo layoff decision is based on a favorable Yahoo stock price - forget it - pretty much every-one's stock is in the dumps except those companies that are doing well globally, like IBM, but that's not saying much about the US operations - and I would not put it past IBM to lay off a bunch of US and Canadian employees and contractors just because they happen to live in an unprofitable economic system in the North American Continent - economics is a cold business - you have to be blue blooded, cold. Glad I'm not in that business.
"…If the economy continues to tank this year then there will likely be many more layoffs at various tech companies to come this year. Those who saw the fallout after 2000 have been through this before. The companies with the highest burn rates are often the first to cut jobs."
Well, what do you think is going to happen this year? Rapid technology growth?
Heard that Yahoo bought BuzzTracker from Marketing Pilgrim. I looked at BuzzTracker last year and looking at it today, it seems to have improved quite a bit from when I last looked.
I guess the sources of Buzz are hand picked and maybe, where they got creative, is the way the information is merged and chosen. I find the acquisition more interesting in that Yahoo felt it needed BuzzTracker - I'm not that impressed with the BuzzTracker platform itself.
Yahoo Facebook - to be or not to be - I've seen a couple of references to a potential Merger/Acquisition brought up over the last 24 hours including one from Deep Jive Interests.
Last year Mashable and BusineessWeek said Yahoo was in talks to buy Facebook for 1 Billion Dollars - Yahoo-Facebook for $1 Billion? and said then:
"…There have been Facebook acquisition rumors before, of course - back in March, the company reportedly turned down a $750 million acquisition offer, deciding to hold out for $2 billion (although the facts were sketchy). With MySpace seeming like a steal at $580M (although many still debate this), $1 billion is high but not astronomical. Facebook isn’t as large as MySpace, of course - at last check, they had 9 million or so users against MySpace’s 100 million plus. But with plans to open up the site beyond colleges and companies, there’s certainly room for growth. It could, of course, come to nothing: the Bebo-BT acquisition offer ($552 million) was never confirmed, and there have been subsequent rumors of a Bebo acquisition by Viacom. "
And that was almost a year ago! Fast forward to August 2nd when the New York Times came out and said Yahoo should buy Facebook in Should Yahoo Try Again for Facebook?
"..But an analyst at Bear Stearns suggests that Yahoo is also being left behind by sites such as MySpace, Facebook and LinkedIn — and said that an acquisition could be a good way to catch up."
"…Based on some fairly rough assumptions — Facebook, as a private company, doesn’t disclose financial figures — Mr. Peck said Facebook could be worth between $5 billion and $6 billion to a potential buyer.
He uses various methods to come up with a price, but one is based on Facebook having a projected EBITDA of $108.7 million in 2008 and a price-earnings multiple of 45 (not far from what Microsoft paid for aQuantive or Google paid for Doubleclick in deals earlier this year). By that math, Facebook would be valued at $4.9 billion.
Yahoo doesn’t have that kind of cash — it reported $2.3 billion in cash and marketable securities in its latest quarterly filing — but with a market capitalization of more than $30 billion, it has ample stock it could use as currency."
I'm going to take a position on this question. I think Yahoo should buy Facebook for 2.5 Billion dollars - I don't think it's worth 5 Billion but I would say that the acquisition makes sense to my way of thinking.
"…Facebook’s recent success could make it even more desirable to Yahoo — but more unattainable as well. Responding to rampant speculation about whether Facebook might be for sale, one of its investors recently told The Deal that a deal seemed highly unlikely, in part because because potential suitors weren’t offering anything near what Facebook considers a fair price.
What’s fair to Facebook? Peter Thiel, a Facebook director and early backer, told The Deal that the company could get $7 billion to $10 billion in a sale.
That may sound expensive in the extreme. But it is worth noting that, barely a year ago, Yahoo’s $1 billion offer seemed pricey as well."
Here's the thing .. no one in their right mind will pay 7 - 10 Billion Dollars for a Social Network that could, on the face of it, disappear in a year or two if it's not managed right - or something else better in Social Networking comes along.
But at 2.5 billion or even 3 billion, I could see a sale like this making sense - and offers a lot of possibilities of merging much of Yahoo's other properties and it's marketing intelligence into the mix - something Facebook probably can't do alone.
I think the acquisition of Facebook by Yahoo is probably a good thing if they can do it at "fair" price.
